Embodying Memories: Early Bible Translations In
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Embodying Memories: Early Bible Translations in
Tranquebar and Serampore
Professor Daniel Jeyaraj
Liverpool Hope University
I thank Dr. Emma Wild-Wood, the Director of the Henry Martyn Centre for inviting me to his lecture.[*] I am grateful to her and her colleagues for this privilege. I am happy that this lecture takes place in the Tyndale House. The name of Henry Martyn evokes fond memories among Indian Christians who are committed to inviting their neighbors to consider the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. His translation of the Bible into Persian and his impact on the Urdu Bible are well known. Secondly, I thank Dr. Peter Williams, the Warden of this renowned place of research on biblical texts. I bring to you greetings from Liverpool Hope University in general and the Andrew Walls Centre for the Study of African and Asian Christianity in particular. As a Christian university, we provide higher education to students representing various traditions and nationalities. In our Centre, we interpret received texts of Euro-American missionaries through the lenses of southern Christians and bring a wealth of capturing insights to bear on our fellow Christians.
I dedicate my lecture to the memory of Henry Martyn, a renowned Bible translator; in this endeavor, he followed the examples of the Lutherans in Tranquebar; he knew of them, could never meet them.[1] On the other hand, he benefited much from interacting with the Baptists in Serampore. Therefore, this lecture examines, from historical perspectives, the role of the Lutherans in translating the Bible into Tamil and the Baptists into a few languages.
Introductory Remarks
The Bible is a storehouse of long-term memories starting from the creation of the world and moving through various historical periods, geographical territories, and lives of numerous individuals, families, and nations. As the Bible has impacted the lives of countless people, especially their manner of constructing meaning and behavior, either directly or indirectly, and thus transforming into their autobiographical memory, it has retained its positive power. Rendering the memories of the Bible into other languages and cultures requires long-term dedication, team work and unwavering trust that the translated text of the Bible will, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, act on its own and produce worthy results. The memories are also associated with different kinds of emotions and loyalties; as such, they either help or hinder people from interpreting their past, especially their identities, their present and their future.
This essay examines, from historical and theological perspectives, the early translations of the Bible into Tamil in Tranquebar and into Bengali and Chinese in Serampore. Tamil is my mother tongue and I can evaluate the etymological, semantic, and historical meanings of words and phrases found in different Tamil translations; on the other hand, I do not understand either Bengali or Chinese; therefore my analysis of these translations rests purely historical sources. I attempt to highlight how successful Bible translators were willing to learn from the wisdom and life experiences of the native scholars and common people, and how they laid firm foundations for better and more profound translations by future generations.
This essay does not examine the earlier translations of biblical passages into Tamil or Malayalam or other Indian languages: before the arrival of the Portuguese traders in 1498 under the leadership of Vasco da Gama, the St. Thomas Christians used Syriac in their churches and Malayalam in their everyday contexts. The Portuguese introduced the Vulgate for worship in India and otherwise they were satisfied with their Portuguese version; but the Jesuit missionaries changed the situation: they translated parts of the Bible into Tamil; though they did not give these translated texts to common people, they incorporated them into their catechisms, story books, devotional literature, and grammars. Henrique Henriques (1520–1600), who spent 52 years among the Tamils, composed a Tamil grammar entitled Arte da Lingua Malabar (1548),[2] Tampirān Vanakkam (1578),[3] Adiyār Varalāru (1586)[4] and created a basic Tamil vocabulary for Christian communication.
Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656) was the next famous Jesuit, who interacted with the Tamils on their terms. His knowledge of Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Greek, Hebrew, Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit enabled him to coin additional words for Christian worship, theology, and witness. He embraced Sanskrit ways of thought and life so that he could introduce the message of the Gospel to the custodians of scripture-based knowledge and rituals in urban temples housing vegetarian deities. Simultaneously, his younger colleague Balthazar da Costa (1610–1673) catered to the spiritual needs of those members of the other Tamil social strata who worshipped meat-eating guardian deities in villages situated in dry land. These Jesuits and their successors continually sought to adapt themselves to the cultural particularities of the Tamil peoples and to translate into Tamil the theological teachings of the Council of Trent (1545–1563).
In the neighbouring Sri Lanka, however, the Dutch preacher Philippus Baldaeus (1632–1672) employed Francis de Fonseca, a native Tamil, to translate the Bible into Tamil; consequently, De Fonseca’s translation of Matthew’s Gospel (1670s) became well-known; while the German Lutheran Pietist missionaries in Tranquebar benefited from the works of Henriques and De Nobili, they were not aware of de Fonseca’s translation.
Early Bible Translations in Tranquebar
The small Danish Colony of Tarangambādi (1620–1845), popularly known in European writings as Tranquebar, became the seedbed of modern Protestant Christianity in and around the great cities of Tanjore, Trichy, Chennai, Pālayamkōttai, and Kolkata. This seaport on the southeastern Coromandel Coast attracted Hindus, Muslims, Roman Catholic Christians, German and Danish Lutherans, and people of several other religious and ideological persuasions. Two mosques for Muslims, a Roman Catholic Church for Indian Christians, the Zion Church for all European Protestant Christians, and fifty-one large and small Hindu temples stood in this so-called Christian Colony; while Europeans viewed it as legally and ecclesiastically belonging to the Christendom territory of Denmark, Indians felt themselves religiously accountable to the King of Tanjore. The trade treaty between the Danes and the King of Tanjore (1620) ensured that the Europeans in Tranquebar could freely practice their Augsburg Religion; no Indian was required or expected to follow the Lutheran tenets; of the eighteen languages spoken in this colony, Tamil occupied the preeminent position; secondly, Indian Portuguese functioned as the communication tool between Indians and Europeans. Tamil interpreters such as Alagappan were fluent at German, Danish, Portuguese, and Dutch.
The origin of the first Lutheran overseas mission was inseparably linked to the troubling family situation of Friedrich IV, the absolute monarch of Denmark on the one hand, and to the Lutheran Pietist leaders in Berlin, Copenhagen, and Halle (Saale) on the other. His court chaplain Franz Julius Lütkens explained that the monarch, who according to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), determined the religious loyalty of his subjects at home, should also extend spiritual care to his subjects in overseas colonies; accordingly, King Friedrich IV ensured that the first missionary candidates B. Ziegenbalg and H. Plütschau were formally called according to the ordinances of the Danish Church and ordained for their work in Danish colonies. Following his instructions, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau landed in Tranquebar on 9 July 1706; initially, the local colonial authorities did not welcome out of fear that their work might empower the Tamils to claim their rights and thus damage Danish commercial prospects. The missionaries endured several types of hardships; with the help of a few Tamils, however, they were able to develop their work, of which their efforts to translate the Bible into Tamil was significant.
These missionaries, particularly Ziegenbalg, took their Lutheran convictions seriously: they realized the importance of incarnation of the Logos as human: God’s Word can be communicated to the Tamils in their own mother tongue. Like the Jesuits Ziegenbalg made every effort to understand the historical, cultural, religious and social meanings of each word that he chose; for this purpose, he complied two Tamil lexicons: one with words used in Tamil prose and the other one with words used only in poetry. He upheld the missiological meaning of Martin Luther’s 62nd thesis: the true treasure of the church is the Gospel of God’s glory and grace. The Tamils should have the Gospel, i.e., not merely the fourfold portrayals of the life and work of Jesus by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but all 69 books of the Bible, in their mother tongue so that they can adequately appreciate God’s glory and grace exhibited to them in Jesus Christ and now made relevant by the Holy Spirit.
Ziegenbalg often reminded himself of the last words of his dying mother: the Bible is the greatest treasure that she had stored for her children. Therefore, he understood his mission as a “service to the soul” and “service to the body.” The Tamils should be able to interact with the texts of the Bible so that they could fully realize the benefits of the Bible for their soul and body. This Tamil Bible would allow the Tamils to re-read their inherited history, religious literature, and socio-cultural practices and see how they could make them more humane and harmonious for all people.
Ziegenbalg obtained definitive insights from his Pietist mentors, particularly from Philip Jacob Spener, August Hermann Francke, and Joachim Lange; these men highlighted the Bible in every aspect of their ministry among students in the university, schools, orphanages, and churches. They expected their theological students to read through Hebrew Old Testament at least once a year and the Greek New Testament at least thrice a year. Ziegenbalg’s classical training in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin enabled him to deal with these texts.
Ziegenbalg’s own conversion experience underlined the importance of harmony between the Creator and the creature. He perceived that the Bible as the Book of Grace and creation as the Book of Nature provide a holistic understanding of human society as it should be: people generally did not know the high status of their creation in God’s image; their fall into sin disrupted the harmony between God and them. Jesus’s death on the cross opened new ways of obtaining forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. This new approach to thinking and living should reestablish and revitalize harmonious relationships between God and human beings, among one another, and between human beings and all other creatures; human beings ought to behave as responsible stewards of God-entrusted natural resources, time, and opportunities. Thus, conversion means a new way of looking at all inherited traditions, beliefs, and customs from the perspective of the Gospel and assisting human beings to experience God’s glory and grace in them. For these purposes, the Tamils should have the Bible in their mother tongue.
In order to make his translation to work well, he listened to and learned from his cook Cepperumāl at home, his 70-year old blind teacher and his school children, the Poet Ganapati Vāttiyār, the Tamil boys and girls in his own mission schools, the Tamil converts in the Jerusalem Church, his assistant Peter Malaiyappan, interpreter Alagappan, and countless dialogue partners. By August 1708, he digested the contents of 119 Tamil writings, mostly on Tamil bhakti religions and codes of ethical conduct: his reading list included books written by Roman Catholic Christians and Muslim scholars. As he delightfully translated into German three short works on Tamil ethics, namely Ulaka Nīti, Kondrai Vēntan, and Nīti Venpā, the high level of Tamil ethics towards fellow human beings and other creatures surprised him. He observed that the Tamil attained this high level of ethics without the aid of the Bible; if only they can read it in their mother tongue, they would scale even higher levels of ethical achievements.
The richness of the Tamil language and Tamil ways of life astonished him greatly; in 1711, he composed a treatise on Tamil Society and entitled it Malabarian Heathenism. In it, he endeavored to illustrate Tamil notions of theology and ways of life. In order to substantiate his claims, he incorporated quotes from 73 Tamil works. Two years later, in 1713, he thematically arranged 145 letters written by his Tamil correspondents and presented their view on the Hidden God, the Revealed God, spirit beings, and social customs. He succulently named his work as The Genealogy of the Malabarian Gods. He and his colleague Gründler continued to receive further letters from their Tamil correspondents on various themes and compiled another work entitled The Malabarian Correspondence (1712–1714); the Tamil correspondents revealed the deeper levels of their socio-cultural and religious world to the German Lutheran missionaries and they were willing to learn from them.
In this context, Ziegenbalg was able to transcend, at least to some extent, the Lutheran hatred for Roman Catholics in Europe. He acknowledged that he had readily borrowed Jesuit words and phrases for God, human beings, sin, salvation, church, and life. He sought to remove from these words and phrases Roman Catholic nuances and to fill them with Lutheran contents. Some of these words and phrases include Parāparavastu (“Divine Substance”),[5] Cuvicēcam (“good news”), Caruvēcuran (“Almighty Lord”), Pāvam (“sin”), Tiruccapai (“holy assembly,” i.e., the church), Cepam (“prayer”), Karaiyērutal (“getting ashore,” i.e., salvation), and the like. He approved these translation gains; however, he like the Jesuits before him, could not find compatible expressions for certain Greek and Portuguese words such as Kurucu (“cross”), Ispirinthu Cāntu (“Holy Spirit”), and Apōstalar (“apostles”). Therefore, he simply transliterated them. These Jesuit words and phrases had their prehistory soaked in Tamil bhakti religions such as Saivism and Vaishnavism. The Jesuits and later the German Lutherans tried hard to saturate these words and phrases with Christian meanings and encouraged their Tamil adherents to act on them. However, these words and phrases have remained ambiguous and contested.